When I first moved to France, I lived just outside of Paris' borders in St.Ouen, a small and diverse town, with not much going on. It had its own small tourist attractions, if a tourist ever happened upon it. But it's pretty much known for its flea market the Marché aux Puces, that most people mistakenly think is in Paris, an easy mistake as its as close to the border of Paris as you can get. You'd enter and not even know you'd crossed over into a new town, a world of lost things in limbo. If you are one of the lucky travelers to actually find your way past the street vendors that mob and camouflage the actual Marche aux Puce you'd find a place where time seems to have collided and lost mementos are abandoned.
However, if you think you'll find great bargains and amazing treasures, you'd be disappointed. Everything is overpriced as you'd expect in tourist hot spots. These shop owners know that old isn't worthless.
While walking around you'll find elaborate vintage dresses, statues, dismantled dolls, high fashion hats, broken chandeliers, sunglasses from every decade; everything from the common to the uncommon.
I used to spend a lot of time there walking on weekends with my dog, Mac, the market entrance was about a five minute walk from where I lived.
It was a nice way to spend a lazy Sunday and the market was such a labyrinth, I was sure to find something new every time. I had a few photo experiments on these walks, photographing the people shopping, the shop owners waiting for something to happen, the many dogs freely roaming the grounds. Taking images in this location was challenging as many shop owners don't want photos to be taken of the items. Not even the junk shops that looked to be filled with nothing but dumpster finds.
But I was able to find a few places unguarded with little traffic where I could take a little longer to mentally ponder how the mismatched items in front of me could be photographed; as was the case with this image. Photographically I became intrigued with how the combination of random things looked together and I found myself walking down an alley filled with statues of all kinds; large and small, fantastical and ornamental.
When people ask me about this image they always assume it is a baby, in actuality it is a stature of a cherub, one of those baby like, cupid characters you see often in paintings of Greek and Roman mythology.
In front of it was an old door leaning against another object. The door had 6 glass panels that had an almost geometric pattern to it, a lot of crinkles and sharp edges, giving the glass the same effect you see sometimes when you look through glass in the rain.
I really liked this effect and started playing around with the combination of the two, using manual focus I tried two options one with the statue in focus, the other with the glass and ended up finding a happy medium between the two making the statue hard to identify.
It felt very voyeuristic and intruding, and I liked it. As if I was creeping into someone's personal life and selfishly taking a moment. It reminded me of a quote from Helmut Newton "Any photographer who says he's not a voyeur is either stupid of a liar." I thought it to be one of these quotes that makes you, as an artist, face a hidden aspect of yourself and I started questioning this idea of being a voyeur and what that would look like if I embraced this moral faux pas.
At least, face it im my own way, without risking arrest. While I was there I really started having these thoughts of boundaries and intrusion and in some ways even what would be violating peoples mini stories as they unfold throughout the day. My thoughts went dark, and I wanted to feel intrusive and obnoxious and morally wrong. I wanted to feel what that would be like, would I feel empowered, sick, evil? What would incorporating those concepts look like in my work? Would the creation of art justify the violations of human privacy I was considering? Was there a greater story to be told about our inner lives? and would I end-up capturing it?...
Perhaps.
Yes, as a photographer I had taken many images without the consent or knowledge of those photographed and created compelling stories from moments that for them where insignificant daily rituals and intruding on their silent inner dialogue.
This was the essence of the body of work I had, even though the participants weren't identifiable I had taken their moment in time and created a body of work from it.
It was interesting acknowledging that I had been and would continue to be a voyeur in my art and I would accept it, embrace it and be grateful for the many nameless people that would contribute to it.
However, if you think you'll find great bargains and amazing treasures, you'd be disappointed. Everything is overpriced as you'd expect in tourist hot spots. These shop owners know that old isn't worthless.
While walking around you'll find elaborate vintage dresses, statues, dismantled dolls, high fashion hats, broken chandeliers, sunglasses from every decade; everything from the common to the uncommon.
I used to spend a lot of time there walking on weekends with my dog, Mac, the market entrance was about a five minute walk from where I lived.
It was a nice way to spend a lazy Sunday and the market was such a labyrinth, I was sure to find something new every time. I had a few photo experiments on these walks, photographing the people shopping, the shop owners waiting for something to happen, the many dogs freely roaming the grounds. Taking images in this location was challenging as many shop owners don't want photos to be taken of the items. Not even the junk shops that looked to be filled with nothing but dumpster finds.
But I was able to find a few places unguarded with little traffic where I could take a little longer to mentally ponder how the mismatched items in front of me could be photographed; as was the case with this image. Photographically I became intrigued with how the combination of random things looked together and I found myself walking down an alley filled with statues of all kinds; large and small, fantastical and ornamental.
When people ask me about this image they always assume it is a baby, in actuality it is a stature of a cherub, one of those baby like, cupid characters you see often in paintings of Greek and Roman mythology.
In front of it was an old door leaning against another object. The door had 6 glass panels that had an almost geometric pattern to it, a lot of crinkles and sharp edges, giving the glass the same effect you see sometimes when you look through glass in the rain.
I really liked this effect and started playing around with the combination of the two, using manual focus I tried two options one with the statue in focus, the other with the glass and ended up finding a happy medium between the two making the statue hard to identify.
It felt very voyeuristic and intruding, and I liked it. As if I was creeping into someone's personal life and selfishly taking a moment. It reminded me of a quote from Helmut Newton "Any photographer who says he's not a voyeur is either stupid of a liar." I thought it to be one of these quotes that makes you, as an artist, face a hidden aspect of yourself and I started questioning this idea of being a voyeur and what that would look like if I embraced this moral faux pas.
At least, face it im my own way, without risking arrest. While I was there I really started having these thoughts of boundaries and intrusion and in some ways even what would be violating peoples mini stories as they unfold throughout the day. My thoughts went dark, and I wanted to feel intrusive and obnoxious and morally wrong. I wanted to feel what that would be like, would I feel empowered, sick, evil? What would incorporating those concepts look like in my work? Would the creation of art justify the violations of human privacy I was considering? Was there a greater story to be told about our inner lives? and would I end-up capturing it?...
Perhaps.
Yes, as a photographer I had taken many images without the consent or knowledge of those photographed and created compelling stories from moments that for them where insignificant daily rituals and intruding on their silent inner dialogue.
This was the essence of the body of work I had, even though the participants weren't identifiable I had taken their moment in time and created a body of work from it.
It was interesting acknowledging that I had been and would continue to be a voyeur in my art and I would accept it, embrace it and be grateful for the many nameless people that would contribute to it.
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